User talk:Dazp1970

Please do not add commercial links or links to your own private websites to Wikipedia, as you did in Vignetting. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. You are, however, encouraged to add content instead of links as long as the content abides by our policies and guidelines. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks. A link to the edit I have reverted can be found here: link. If you believe this edit should not have been reverted, please contact me. Mr Stephen 21:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Why remove my resources links?
You wrote:


 * You have today removed all of the links to external sources that I have placed.
 * The links all point to my website, not because I am spamming, but because the information on my website compliments the articles to which they refer.
 * You will note that my website is very content rich, has virtually zero advertising and I sell nothing. Whereas I do not gain from adding these external links, users of Wikipedia gained further sources of relevant information from their presence.
 * I would like to know why you have removed them?
 * Darrell.

I removed the links because of the Wikipedia policy on External links (External links). Specifically see, Links normally to be avoided #1 and #3. I felt that your site did offer some helpful advice to some of the articles, but that it was redundant to the information already in the article, or what should be in the article once it is fully written. I am not diametrically opposed to your links, but I would offer that self-links are better placed by other editors. If you feel that your resource is really helpful, you should place a note on the article's talk page. If other editors agree, then they will add your link. SteveHopson 01:27, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your message on my talk page. Yes, talk pages and discussion pages are the same thing. Please don't worry about getting things exactly right at first. The links in the welcome box above contain pointers to the various policies and guidelines. As SteveHopson has pointed out, at first sight your links didn't meet the guidline at External links and the policy at What Wikipedia is not, and you should talk to the other editors on the article's talk page. I doubt that anyone would complain if you improved the article by adding the information that is in your web pages and not currently in the article (see also WP:CITE, and be bold). Mr Stephen 10:30, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your response on my Talk page. I agree with Mr. Stephen above and would add that we were all new here once. We greatly appreciate constructive additions to articles and it sounds like you have a lot of experience and knowledge that would benefit the encyclopedia. We also end up spending a lot of time just policing changes to articles because there is so much vandalism to Wiki. I you decide to post notices on the discussion pages for articles to which you would like to add links, please let me know. I would like to support your efforts. SteveHopson 21:49, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Digital photography link removal
Thanks for your note on my talk page. Having checked my edit history, I have discovered that I removed the following links, for the following reasons:
 * Fotoğraf Çekimi - Self-explanatory. In a different language entirely...
 * History of digital photography - ad-heavy site
 * Information about the raw file format - would be better on a page about this file format
 * National Geographic Adventure Mag.: Q & A with Photographer Jim Brandenburg - out of date by four years
 * Digital vs. film: One photographer's experience - seems to be advertising itself. Information from this page is mostly one photographers view, and any hard facts can be included in the article.
 * Close-up insect photography with the Nikon Coolpix Close-up insect p[hotography is not what this article is about...
 * Digital vs film - practically everything on this page can be included in the WP article
 * Digital photography terminology - This one, having read into it, isn't that bad. Re-add it if you want!

Wikipedia is a community project, and adding external links adds very little to an article. Why not include what's on your site (I'm not sure which one this is, unfortunately) to Wikipedia? I'll be more than happy to reword anything for you, or to make it Wikipediable (ie, transforming form a list to a pragraph, etc. I didn't mean to cause offence, but as a rule, four or five is a good maximum for external links, in my opinion! Hawker Typhoon 12:37, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It's tricky to explain the exact reasons behind removing the links. Althout there are policies to go by, most notably WP:EL and WP:NOT, it's mostly 'instinct'. There are three rules I always try go by when I decide to remove a link:


 * 1) Is it an advertising site/is it selling products (even slightly)? If so, it gets removed.
 * 2) Is it something that can be included in the article? If it is, then the link shouldn't be there - the information should be included in the article, rather than linked to on an external site.
 * 3) The final one, and the one which I think is the main problem when you add your site, is WP:COI. Of course you want to add your site; it's yours, and you see it as helpful. But if it was truly linkable, someone else would have put it on for you.
 * My advice is not to link your site. Instead, take the material from your site, and publish on Wikipedia under the GNU free documentation license. If you aren't willing to do this, then we can take the raw knowledge off your site, and include it in such a way that it does not violate your copyright. However, it is important to note that anything that can be included in the article, should be, rather than including it in an external link. Hawker Typhoon 01:48, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * P.S.: I removed the RAW link because it dealt primarily with advertising (albiet indirectly) the RAW format, one which is not often used and is (arguably) not as useful as JPEG, TIFF or other file types. The JPEG page, however, deals with meta data in the files, and is not solely relevant to JPEGs.